You can also create wonderful fading effects using opacity maps. With opacity mapping,
you don??™t have to model certain details, which can be a real time saver. In this example,
you will create a chain-link fence. However, you will not model a fence. You will create it
entirely from mapping. To make a chain-link fence, follow these steps:
1. Open the Chain Link Opacity Map.max file in the Texture Scene Files folder on the
companion CD. Open the Material Editor and select a sample slot. First, you are
going to add a bitmap to the diffuse color, so go to the Maps rollout. Select the
bar next to Diffuse Color. Pick Bitmap from the Material/Map browser and navigate
to the Texture Scene Files folder on the CD. Choose Chain Link.tif (shown in
Figure 7.58).
using opacity maps ?– 331
Figure 7.58
The chain-link
texture
2. Go to the Coordinates rollout and change both the U and V Tiling parameters to 3.0.
This will scale down the image because the image repeats three times.
3. Apply the material to the Plane geometry in the scene. Click the Show Map in Viewport
button. Render and you will see something similar to Figure 7.59. As you can see,
the chain-link image appears on the plane, but you can??™t see the objects on the other side.
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